Melrose Place’s Katie Cassidy and Michael Rady partner with AT&T for PSA on the dangers of texting while driving.

Melrose Place’s tech-savvy publicist Ella Simms spends a lot of time on her cell phone, but she’s too smart to endanger herself by texting while driving. This is a message that will come across on the March 30 episode, which includes a scene where Our Miss Simms abandons this potentially lethal habit. Immediately after the episode, Ella’s portrayer, Katie Cassidy, joins co-star Michael Rady (Jonah) in a public service announcement from AT&T warning viewers about the dangers of texting while driving. It’s part of a major campaign launched by the communications giant to fight the growing threat of this practice, which has joined drinking and driving as a danger on our roads. America is text crazy. Statistics from AT&T show that 457 billion text messages crossed their network last year compared to about 243 billion in 2008. Everything has its place, however, and AT&T’s clever campaign “Txting and Drivng… it can wait” is spot on. I personally always ask people whether they’re driving when they call me. It makes me uncomfortable to think I may be distracting someone when their attention should be on the road, so I applaud this effort. Using Ella to deliver the message is especially smart given we Melrosers hang on her every word. It doesn’t hurt that Katie and Jonah look super-cute in the spot, too. To support AT&T’s campaign, visit them at Facebook here.